Candlestick formation · Neutral
What is it, in one line
A bar whose range covers the whole of the previous range.
Neutral · 2 candles · verdict: rule and thresholds below
A bar whose range covers the whole of the previous range. The engine checks the formation as an executable condition over open, high, low and close, with a trend filter applied before the count is kept.
Method
The opposite of an inside bar: this candle’s high is above the previous high and its low below the previous low. A price-action construct rather than a Japanese formation, and not the same as an engulfing, which constrains the bodies.
The traditional claim
Traditionally read as a volatility expansion, with the direction taken from where the bar closes rather than from the shape itself.
How this detection is wrong
An outside bar need not be an engulfing and an engulfing need not be an outside bar — one is about ranges, the other about bodies. Neither implies the other, and the counts differ substantially.
Published so the count can be reproduced. Every figure below is a parameter of the rule, not a preference: change one and the occurrence count changes with it.
| Parameter | Meaning | Default |
|---|---|---|
| minPriorRangeAtr | the preceding range, at least, in ATR | 0.5 |
| atrPeriod | bars of ATR used to size everything below | 14 |
These share enough geometry that a detector can return more than one of them on the same bar. The engine reports every match rather than picking a winner.
Every pair on the site that can be mistaken for another, and what separates each: the look-alikes index.
The opposite of an inside bar: this candle’s high is above the previous high and its low below the previous low. A price-action construct rather than a Japanese formation, and not the same as an engulfing, which constrains the bodies.
It is read as neutral. Traditionally read as a volatility expansion, with the direction taken from where the bar closes rather than from the shape itself.
An outside bar need not be an engulfing and an engulfing need not be an outside bar — one is about ranges, the other about bodies. Neither implies the other, and the counts differ substantially.
As an executable rule over open, high, low and close, with 2 named parameters — including the preceding range, at least, in ATR 0.5, bars of ATR used to size everything below 14 — all published on this page so the count can be reproduced. Strict and loose variants are defined as well, so the sensitivity of the count to those thresholds is visible rather than assumed.
Measurement pending re-run
No hit rate is published here yet. The run that would supply one was computed on engine ca6d9e36c81c; the engine is now cfb08765de7c. Its candlestick rows included the still-forming bar, and it predates the chart formations entirely, so those figures have been withdrawn rather than published with a caveat. The definition above is unaffected: it is what the detector tests, and no re-run changes it.